sport world

RANCHO CUCAMONGA – Mother Nature supplied the spectacular lightning in the distant San Gabriel Mountains but it was Alta Loma Little League and Upland Foothill reliever Tommy Pincin who supplied the thunder. Alta Loma advanced into the wier’s brac...

RANCHO CUCAMONGA – Mother Nature supplied the spectacular lightning in the distant San Gabriel Mountains but it was Alta Loma Little League and Upland Foothill reliever Tommy Pincin who supplied the thunder. Alta Loma advanced into the wier’s bracket of the Section 8 Touament Saturday with a 13-0 win over Apple Valley American in a game that lasted just four iings. Upland Foothill also advan...

Notes and observations as USC and Texas prepare for a game that can’t possibly match their 2006 encounter ... LOS ANGELES >> You might be surprised to hear which USC coach was in tears in the locker room immediately after the Trojans lost to Texas, 41-38, in the BCS title game. Was it Pete Carroll? Steve Sarkisian? Ed Orgeron? No, someone who has a less-emotional image: Lane Kiffin. Perhaps ...

LOS ANGELES — As Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman stood on the edge of a tarmac at Los Angeles Inteational Airport, a long flight from Lima, Peru and an improbable victory behind them, the sun was setting on what is once again an Olympic city. In a sense, the Olympic Games were retuing home as wellThursdayevening. A day earlier the Inteational O...

Long Beach native and longtime sports executive Jack Teele passed away Wednesday night at the age of 87. Teele was a sportswriter at the Independent Press-Telegram for 10 years and then spent 33 years in the front offices around the National Football League, including 21 years with the Los Angeles Rams, where he rose to the rank of vice president of administration. Teele was a long-familiar face i...

After a dogfight in the first half, the No. 2-seeded Sparks pulled away from the fifth-seeded Phoenix Mercury, and the defending WNBA champions won their playoff opener and the first game of their semifinal series Tuesday. The Sparks defense helped them stifle Phoenix in the second half of a 79-66 victory. “It went just like I thought it would, you’ve got champions over there,” said Sparks coach B...

LOS ANGELES — A key step in the selection of an Olympic host city is the Inteational Olympic Committee evaluation commission’s tour of candidate cities. These visits give IOC officials the chance to tour proposed venues and Olympic Village sites, ride subway lines and gauge the interest of the community in hosting the Games and then report back to the rest of the IOC’s 94 members prior to the ho...

THOUSAND OAKS >> No dramatic moment, no speech, no loud applause. The Rams simply conducted their defensive meetings Monday with Aaron Donald in attendance, and that normalcy had to feel superb. Donald, the Rams’ star lineman who ended his six-week contract holdout Saturday, got back to work at team headquarters. The plan, according to Coach Sean McVay, is for Donald to be on the field when ...

By the time Lonzo Ball begins his first training camp with the Lakers on Sept. 24 he will have already released several versions of his signature shoe, starred in a reality show chronicling the daily lives of his family and dropped a rap single. It has been, by any measure, a busy summer for the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft and the NBA Summer League MVP. “I look at it pretty simply,” Ball said Mond...

SAN FRANCISCO >> For a team that could still win 100 games, the Dodgers sure seem to have a lot of questions to answer about their postseason roster. “We have a lot of good players we’re still evaluating,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before Monday’s game. “We have a lot of guys to work with. When you have the lead we had, you can prioritize health and trying to keep guys sharp while tr...

LOS ANGELES >> Just before Rams quarterback Jared Goff disappeared into the Coliseum tuel late Sunday afteoon to celebrate his first win as an NFL quarterback, he paused, peeked over to a hundred or so fans shouting his name from the stands and raised his right arm to the sky. The roar that immediately erupted was unlike anything we’ve heard from the Coliseum for an NFL team in what seem...

LOS ANGELES >> Dodgers infielder Rob Segedin had no more control over the date his Predictive Analytics project was due than the day he would retu to the major leagues, but this was the life he chose. As luck would have it, Segedin leaed the Dodgers were bringing him up from Triple-A the day before the project was due. That made Aug. 17 an interesting day in the life of baseball’s most d...

For the first time since 2006, the “Milk Bucket” is headed back to Mayfair as the Monsoons (3-0) beat Lakewood (0-3), 21-18, at Ron Yary Stadium. “This is the biggest win in 30 years,” Mayfair coach Derek Bedell told the team. “We have a lot of things to work on but we are going to celebrate first.” It was a back-and-forth game in the first half as both teams had multiple miscues and penalties, wi...

LOS ANGELES >> The Dodgers had a 100 percent chance of qualifying for the postseason on Aug. 25, according to the website FanGraphs.com. Their odds are still 100 percent today. On paper, the last two weeks have changed nothing. Yet to anyone scrutinizing the Dodgers with their hearts, everything has changed. They began the season 91-36. They are 1-13 since. They are a team that continues to ...

Christian McCaffrey torpedoed USC’s defense the last two seasons. As Stanford upended the Trojans three times in 2016 and 2015, McCaffrey tallied 970 all-purpose yards. How tough was it to bring down the elusive ruing back? Reporters covering the Pac-12 championship game in 2015 overheard then-USC defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox and other coaches swearing in an adjacent press box booth at Le...

LOS ANGELES >> Of the 159 rushing yards Ronald Jones amassed in USC’s season-opening victory over Weste Michigan, 122 came after contact. Deland McCullough, the Trojans’ ruing backs coach, took notice. “It ain’t always the flash and long runs,” McCullough said. “It’s the dirty work of lowering your shoulder, ruing through trash, breaking arm tackles and sending a physical message to yo...

LOS ANGELES >> The Dodgers found a new way to lose Tuesday. For a team that has lost 10 of its past 11 games, it was no small feat. In the 10th iing of a tie game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Dodgers pitcher Pedro Baez walked the first two batters he faced. Both scored when third baseman Justin Tuer threw to the plate for a likely out, only to watch his throw carom off the glove of ...

OAKLAND >> This time, Garrett Richards walked off the mound alone, perhaps only disappointed at the hanging slider he’d just thrown. It was better than the last time he’d walked off the mound at the Oakland Coliseum, that time accompanied by trainer Eric Munson. Although no one knew it at the time, it would be the start of a five-month hiatus for the Angels’ ace because of biceps nerve irrit...

The Los Angeles Football Club continues building its roster ahead of its 2018 Major League Soccer debut. LAFC aounced the signing of 21-year-old Argentine forward Rodrigo Pacheco, who joins on loan from Club Atletico Lanus in Argentina’s first division. Pacheco will be loaned to Orange County SC, the USL affiliate for LAFC, for the remainder of 2017. He’s expected to join LAFC for training camp ...

PHOENIX >> The Dodgers were swept for the first time this season, losing 8-1 to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday afteoon at Chase Field. The sweep was the first of the Dodgers since they lost the last three games of the 2016 regular season to the San Francisco Giants. The loss also extended the Dodgers’ losing streak to five games, their longest since a six-game skid April 25-30, 2016....